Dear W3C,
I hope that you will consider the Unisys situation where they have
finally enforced their claim on the LZW compression used in .GIF files. For
years their claim laid dormant and now they are enforcing their claim (see
http://burnallgifs.org/ )
So now a perfectly fine image format has to be thrown out because most web
site owners cannot afford to pay Unisys the $5000 per site licensing fee to
utilize .GIF images that were created with improperly licensed graphic
programs.
Everyone that uses the Internet has to pay for access to it in some way. If
large companies are allowed to patent STANDARDS, this will result in
increased costs in someway; like paying to access a web site just to read
the content.
And it will force developers back into creating hacks and work-arounds to
avoid having to pay some royalty to a company that happens to own the
patent on some way of building web pages.
-- Hacks and work-arounds are exactly opposite to standards!
Don't force developers to create a hack that becomes an "unwritten
standard" just because we cannot afford to pay a royalty to use a STANDARD!!!
Please reconsider. Standards are supposed to make the web a better place.
Let the patents be held by companies for something UNIQUE that they create!
NOT STANDARDS.
Thank you for your time,
- Ted Bergeron
BeeBot Web Design
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